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I read it in a couple of hours (I'm very slow) and it was a very good couple of hours in the company of this cheerful pessimist. He doesn't hold back, essentially we're all going down the toilet very fast and if you don't agree this book still has some hard truths for you.

This is a book on singers and musicians drawn from popular music. Huey Morgan sets out his stall on page one with a three paragraph summary on the death of Kurt Cobain which is as succinct as it is brief. I thought the rest of the book was going to be similarly bleak, not so. Kurt Cobain is a...

Political diaries are always a hit or miss affair. In this particular instance Chris Mullin made the decision to write a diary on the UK Government when New Labour came to power in 1997 and as a decent guy with no personal political scandal he was able to write extensively without enmity, by...

Hmm. Seen this before I have. It's A New Hope all over again, visually rich and sumptious with plenty of warm touches, action packed and enjoyable. That said IMHO it does have major problems, if the film was a reboot I would forgive the majority of them but it's meant to be an episode. You...

Raw Spirit, Iain Banks's one and only non fiction book wasn't Iain's idea, he came to write it because his agent, Mic Cheetham, thought he was an ideal candidate to write a whisky book for a publisher she did business with. The final result as well as being a book about whisky also finished up...

Susanna Clarke's three volume story gets proper room with a seven part series. Just seen episode one and it is good.

When Lufthansa Germanwings 9525 crashed, the black box indicated that the co-pilot was able to lock the pilot out of the flight deck. The door to the airbus flight deck is a reinforced door of a type introduced after 9/11. You get the impression that the air authorities that oversee such...

This is a story about war and predestination. The main character, Robert Jordan, is very much a romanticised version of Hemingway himself. Robert Jordan's interesting (I say Robert Jordan as he's never referred to as Robert in the third person, a narrative quirk) because his internal thought...

I quite enjoyed this film, considering the novel is noteworthy for it's syntax and prose style it's a good adaption. For me Garrett Hedlund does a fine job as Dean Moriarty, his portrayal of the party monster is spot on, Garrett's lucky though, the film is built around Dean just as in the book...

If like me you've got a lot on your mind this book might help particularly if you've a leaning towards eastern philosophy. The blurb stated at the time of printing that Eckhart 'is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition.' I found it to be...

Ilium is part one of a story where godlike beings exist and base themselves on the gods of classical Greece. They're real and supremely powerful because of technology developed by our successors, a mysterious race called the Post Humans. These 'gods' quantum tunnel back to the time of the Trojan...

Iain had mostly finished writing about a man dying of cancer before he himself was diagnosed with terminal cancer. On receiving the diagnosis and prognosis, Iain went back to the draft and added a further ten thousand words and it shows. The last two non-Culture books that Iain had published...

The Gap Yah Plannah, Orlando Charmon (Matt Lacey). The ultimate guide to world travelling for the young and seriously cashed up. Orlando (now presumably hard at work as a student in St. Andrews University, Scotland) has put together this book based upon his experiences on his gap yah, that's...

The first in a series of fantasy books featuring Thursday Next, Literary Detective. In amongst the nonsense is the novel idea that people can be physically transported into classic books and alter the stories simply by being in them. On this premise is built the world of Thursday Next with...

If that was the case then there should be other lifeforms with a different DNA sequence in the fossil record.

UK writer Iain Banks has recently announced he has terminal cancer. http://friends.banksophilia.com/ I've been a fan of this writer for many years so although I don't know him I found the news quite affecting, anyway the above link will take you to a guestbook set up for family, friends and...

Iain M Banks Culture novel number 9 or 10 concerns itself with the cousins of the Culture, an advanced civilisation called the Gzilt. The Gzilt having reached the done everything stage of galactic development have decided to leave the 'real' galaxy forever like millions of civilisations before...

BBC News - Omnishambles named word of the year by Oxford English Dictionary Omnishambles, I think that's a great word.

Peter Hook, bass guitar player in New Order has been doing the rounds talking about his Joy Division memoir, Unknown Pleasures and he was in Glasgow Waterstones today. I heard him being interviewed on the radio afterwards, he said that during the signing a 16 year old girl confessed that she was...

31 Songs is a collection of essays on pop music using songs as a theme, I found it funny and interesting. Nick is a true music fan that's to say you better watch out if you don't fit the criteria of what a true music fan is, by Nick's definition. The first warning shot whistled by me on page...